Jean-Pierre Bekolo:
Aristotle’s Plot

Join us for the closing of our first exhibition in 2016, our first exhibition in our new home, our first exhibition in Berlin-Wedding! Come on Thursday for a last visit of the show and the screening of Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Aristotle's Plot and a following talk with the filmmaker!

Why are African filmmakers always asked political questions? Where is the Black Man today? Are they all to be Nelson Mandela? Can Nelson Mandela make a film? Why are African filmmakers always “young”, “upcoming”, “promising”, “emerging”, “developing“, until they are eighty years old and then suddenly they become “the ancestor”, “the father”, “the wise role model”?

The film has its origins when the British Film Institute selected Bekolo to be the African entry in its series celebrating the first 100 years of film. Together with filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, Stephen Frears, and Bernardo Bertolucci, he was given a budget and carte blanche to make a film that would be a meditation on cinema and filmmaking. He took the assignment literally, and turned out a cinematic allegory on the meaning of film in Africa today.
Bekolo involves us in a meta-discourse on cinema which tackles the state and direction of cinema on the continent where we find a dominance of non-African works and the clear absence of African films on the screens.

 

PRESS

Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Le complot d’Aristote, a satirical gangster film indebted to early Godard, turns on a plea for post-colonialist Africa to come more fully into its own (...) Like Godard’s, Bekolo’s filmmaking, indebted to Brecht, is much about distancing one’s materials in order to spur thought.

Dennis Grunes

Much the experience comes from the sound-track–from the lyrics to songs and, more importantly, Bekolo’s voice-over narration. As we try to put all the pieces together, the plot turns back on itself, scenes are repeated, characters prance around like the pawns and symbols that they are.

Michael Dembrow

Partly taken from Africavenir